Pete Hartley: sometime dramaturg, perennial scribbler
A romantic reunion at Caernarfon Airworld It was my first time. Just me and she. I was five days shy of my seventeenth birthday and it only lasted three minutes but she lifted me a thousand feet high then let me down very gently. Last week we met again. In 1973 she was to be … Continue reading Spoiler alert: contains glider components
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s notorious attempt to kill off Sherlock Holmes was an infamous failure when an outraged public following demanded his resurrection and the author reluctantly obliged. Likewise, all attempts to bury the detective have proved impossible. His popularity is currently high. It was also buoyant in the mid-1980s due to the superb rendition … Continue reading Spare Parts from Sherlock
One millisecond after midnight on the first day of September 1978 death, fusion, reincarnation, resurrection and birth all occurred at the same instant. At that moment three hundred and thirty-three cumulative years of education concluded and continued. Three colleges ceased to exist and lived on. That was the precise moment when three historic Preston Catholic … Continue reading Hard Terms
Planet Academia As examination Results Day draws near the pulse rate rises, the appetite shrinks, limbs involuntarily tremble, tempers shorten, bursts of perspiration erupt and sleepless nights are wracked with waking nightmares. And it’s almost as bad for the students. Only the smug can feign confidence, or those who specialise in subjects that are not … Continue reading Paper Helium Day
Staging Equus in Edinburgh We hear so much these days about poor mental health and how there appears to be a plague of it presenting with epidemic proportions, especially among the young. There have always been dramas that focused on psychology and the sometimes horrendous consequences of mental malfunctioning. Of all the modern texts that … Continue reading Horseplay on Princes Street
Observations on a commemoration A couple of years ago a video installation at the Harris Museum in Preston projected extraordinary film footage onto the wall of the main staircase. It showed crowds of smiling, waving and cheering people standing on the platform of Preston Railway station as packed carriages of eager, and blatantly exuberant, soldiers … Continue reading A Whiter Shade of Pal
We are the progeny of Mother Nature and the playmates of the sprites and demons that hide in what we now call DNA.
A reflection The most frequent question asked of those approaching retirement is: what are you going to do? The most potent answer to which is: what do you do on your day off? After 365 consecutive days off it is satisfying to report that retirement is everything that it is cracked up to be – … Continue reading A year of calling it a day
A review of the touring production of Beautiful – The Carole King Musical With the passing of the analogue age it is unlikely that songs will ever dominate the combined consciousness as numerously as they did in the latter part of the twentieth century. Although audiences are much larger now, they not as universally imposed … Continue reading A few cross-stitches short of a tapestry
. . .and one way to prevent it Parlick Pike dominates the landscape north of Chipping in Lancashire. It does so for two reasons. Firstly, because it protrudes south from the bulk of the Bleasdale fells, and secondly, as a consequence of its distinctive profile. It is that peculiar form that, according to tradition, gave … Continue reading Going Pear-Shaped
uneasywords 